Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

around the island of Iona, making a pathway reminiscent of the shape of agiant ear. Iona is the island of Saint Columba, who brought Christianity toEurope.Imagine the first settlers of North America confronted by the massivevirgin forests. The landscape was not particularly inviting. It was pagan,and even frightening at times. Even today, if you walk in the fields unaware,you may contract a violent rash brought on by poison ivy, poison oak, orpoison sumac, insidiously passing their oils on to you.The secondary growth in forests is overpowering. Today the stateof New Hampshire is ninety percent forest. In 1900 it was ninety percentcleared fields. The forces of growth are so powerful that you feel alwaysthe need to take a stand against it, or else it may swallow you up. There isvariety, too. In the combined states of North Carolina and Tennessee, thereare more species of trees than in all of Europe.A prominent land feature on the East Coast is the Canadian Shield, ahuge basin of ancient rock consisting of gneiss and granite that covers mostof Canada east of the Great Plains and north of the Great Lakes. Here wefind many potholelakes and glacial,carved rivers. TheHudson Bay, likea giant bib abovethe shield, is notdeep; it is a scoureddepression madeby the ice. Imaginethe force andpower producedby the four ice agesas they shaped andreshaped the land!For example, MountThe Ipswich River, an auburn, slow-moving river movingthrough the coastal plain by Middleton, MassachusettsWashington, New England’s highest peak at 6,288 feet, had one mile of iceabove its summit. The weight of this ice and its movement shaped the earth,as a potter’s hand kneads clay.Few people live in this region because of the poor soil and cold climate.However, many valuable minerals lie beneath its surface. The daysare intense with sunlight, and the nights are inky in their darkness. Here thecontinent breathes light and darkness. As a rule, the people in this regionpossess a strong consciousness and wakefulness, necessitated by both the28